Emily Stamey is a curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art who creates exhibitions that expand ideas of contemporary art, participation, and connection. Her exhibitions challenge our perceptions of how museums showcase their work, often allowing more viewer feedback and analysis. We talked about curating, participation, and allowing yourself to be affected by your surroundings.

TAB: You’re a curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, but you come to the valley by way of Wichita, Kansas. What kinds of art projects were you creating and curating in Kansas?

Stamey: I was at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University in Kansas, so a range of projects related to the collection there--of modern and contemporary art--and projects that related to that particular community and student body.

Prior to leaving, I was working on a project with Tony Feher, who is a sculptor out of New York. The museum had closed its galleries for a major renovation, and I had to come up with projects that could be done outside of those spaces. I invited Tony to come and do a cross-campus installation, which was really remarkable. I also did a traveling show--almost like a pop-up exhibition--that was called Tell It Like It Is: Candor in Contemporary Video Art. The videos all used humor to tackle tough issues. And they were all single-channel, so I could move from place to place and didn’t necessarily need a gallery to screen them. I showed them at a restaurant one night with a dinner party, at a young professionals’ luncheon downtown, and in a student gallery on campus.

One of the videos was a project called the Complaints Choir, which is organized by two artists from Finland who go to major cities and ask people to vent and moan about anything that they’re upset about--it could be politics, it could be their computers, it could be anything--and then the artists take the complaints and work with a composer to set them to music. Then they get a community choir to perform the songs around town in public places. They’ve opened up the project and invited other people to create their own Complaints Choirs. So, I did just that; the museum spent a year collecting complaints from all sorts of people in Wichita, and then the choir director on campus set them to music and the university’s top choir performed the song on campus and around town through the spring semester. So I was really working in public practice right before I left Wichita State. It was great, it was really fun.

TAB: Some of the projects that you were working on were more participatory in nature, with the curator as an intermediary between the artist and the community. How do you see the changing role of the curator in this model?

Stamey: I guess for as long as I’ve been curating, this has been my model, so I don’t see it as a huge change. One of the first projects I did was when I was still in graduate school and working at the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas. The museum redesigned and reinstalled the 20th- and 21st-century gallery, and I was given the opportunity to help the director lead that process. One of the things that we wanted was for the new gallery to generate a lot of interdisciplinary conversation. So we created a faculty task force with participants from all different disciplines, not just Art or Art History: we had English faculty, Dance faculty, Music faculty, and professors from Physics, Economics, Geography. They helped us think about how different objects in the collection related to different fields of study and how the objects could inspire conversations. After working with them, we came up with an installation plan where objects in the gallery could be changed in and out quite frequently. And we even made dedicated spaces that we called the Conversations. Different people from campus or the community would be invited to suggest a theme for the Conversation and help select artworks from the collection that might inspire a dialogue about that topic. That’s not exactly the same kind of participation as the Complaints Choir project, but certainly participation on another level. And that sort of broad engagement, or at least possibility for engagement, has always been part of how I think about the projects that I put together. Even if I’m not working with groups of people to create a show, I want the show itself to engage lots of people and to open up broad conversations.

TAB: Describe your process of curating a show. How does it start and how do you work toward completion?

Stamey: It really depends on the show. If I’m doing a collection show, and I’ve done two of them since I’ve been here at SMoCA, I’m working from a distinct set of objects. I’m looking back at past collection shows and looking for a new perspective that I can bring to the collection. I’m also thinking about which objects I’d love to see placed together. These shows tend to come together somewhat quickly.

Other projects might be two, three, five years in the making; they’re bigger research projects. I really love thematic shows that start with something—an idea, a concern, a question--that I’m noticing in the world, and not necessarily the art world at all. So for instance, the show that I brought with me from Wichita was called Stocked: Contemporary Art from the Grocery Aisles, and it looked at our food culture from all sorts of vantage points, and considered questions about food production’s environmental impact, and who has access to food and who doesn’t. The questions were ones that had been coming up in the news and in conversations around me.

I’m trained as an art historian, so when I really want to dig into a topic, I turn to artists and artworks as my guides. So with Stocked, I started with lists and files of all the artworks I encountered that were addressing these questions about food. At some point you realize you have a sort of critical mass and there’s an exhibition to be put together. So then I start making selections and thinking about how different pieces might work together to raise certain questions or offer starting points for answers. I think about how broadly or tightly I want to focus the show—both conceptually and visually. Am I trying to represent a range of voices from different backgrounds, or am I presenting a particular perspective? Which will be more meaningful to my audience? Should the show include a range of mediums? If so, do I have enough sculptural work versus 2D work? Do I have enough video? Do I have too much video? These are just some of the different questions that get asked. Answering them helps narrow down the selections until there’s a beginning checklist for the show. Then you work to make that list a reality by reaching out to artists, galleries, and other museums to secure the loans.

The future checklist that I’m working on now is for a show on the theme of fairy tales, which are not something in which I’ve had a longstanding interest. I read them as a kid, but as an adult I’m not drawn to fantasy genres. But, I kept seeing them pop up: I’d notice them as featured new books when I went to the library or bookstore, and I’d see previews for fairy tale stories in the movies; it seemed like they were constantly on TV shows, they were on the fashion runways. Now I notice them everywhere. And it’s made me think there must be something in the zeitgeist that sparks our going back to these stories. And why is that?

I started looking at fairy tales in contemporary art, and there’s a lot of fantastical material, and it’s darker than you’d imagine. So much of it has to do with difficult social issues--famine, war, dysfunctional families. I started compiling a master list of anything and everything I found and then began narrowing it down to see if I could find a cohesive story, no, more of a focused conversation around the idea of how fairy tales are relevant today. There have been a handful of fairly tale exhibitions in the last few years, so I’ve had to think about how I’ll craft one that adds to the ideas they discuss. All of these types of issues are part of my thinking and what I’m parsing out when I put together a show.

TAB: How has your curatorial evolution changed since coming to Arizona? Do you notice that you’re doing things differently, or that you’re doing different exhibitions here than you thought of doing?

Stamey: I think to a degree, and I think it’s been informed by the new people I have access to, and what I think are compelling topics for audiences here. It’s not enough for me to want to do a show just because I find it interesting. Others need to find it interesting too. I’m not curating for myself, I’m curating for all the people who come to the museum.

I’m curating an exhibition this fall by an artist named Kelly Richardson, who does these wonderfully smart, stunningly beautiful video installations of eerie, sublime landscapes. The most monumental one to date is a projection of what Mars might look like in about 200 years littered with all of our research debris--the remains of the rovers, the remains of the robots. I read about the piece a couple of years ago, shortly after moving here, and thought “Wow, I now live in a place that’s a hotbed of Mars research. Wouldn’t this video be interesting to show here in Arizona? I mean, some of the scientists who built that material are probably just down the road from me.”

After I went to see the piece installed and then contacted the artist, I learned that she was actually working with NASA data and research coming out of Arizona. She said that before she figured out how to craft the images digitally on her own, she had been planning to come and film the Arizona desert. So these sorts of connections inspire my thinking. This installation would not have the same relevance in Wichita, Kansas. It would not have the same relevance in Seattle, Washington. I could be a great show in either of those locations, but here it has a particular link to place that I find really compelling.

In addition to the shows I choose to curate, my ideas for programming are inspired by the people I can collaborate with here. I’ve done a couple programs with Performance in the Borderlands, Phonetic Spit, different departments at ASU. Right now I’m in talks with ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination to create some events in conjunction with this video installation in the fall. These partnerships that are available inform my thinking in new ways. But I don’t think I have changed essentially as a curator by coming here. Maybe I’ll think differently on that as I look back, but I feel that everything I do is still driven by wanting to open conversations inspired by amazing objects. My practice changes by degrees depending on who I’m having the conversations with and who my audience is.

TAB: You’re a curator at a major art institution in the valley, what is some advice you can give to artists who wish to have art up at a museum like yours?

Stamey: It’s such a hard question. And I probably answer it differently every time I’m asked.

There’s no perfect algorithm for which art gets shown in a museum. We (the curators) ask ourselves so many questions when we’re considering which shows to put on the calendar because we want to offer a balanced variety. Are we offering enough range in terms of international, national, and regional work? What about mediums—have we been showing more photography, is it time to show sculpture? What about content--is it time for us to do a heavy subject, is it time to do something with a lighter tone to it? How much can we ask our audience to engage in one subject before we offer them another? And then there are the practical, logistical questions: When are traveling shows available? When are the artists we’d like to work with available? Do we need to shift shows around in order to line them up with grant opportunities? How much space do two shows need and do we have enough to present them at the same time? It’s incredibly complicated—I joke that it can be like playing Tetris to get everything you want to fit, and I’m not sure that’s always understood. We can be in conversation about a possible project and then it gets put off for a while, often as a result of things extraneous to the project itself. So, I guess I say all that to encourage artists to keep these complexities in mind and to know that the quality of their work is one important element in a very big puzzle for museums.

I think the other advice I’d share is the same I’ve been given as a curator, which is to stay connected. There are artists whose work I’ve wanted to show for years, but I still haven’t found the right moment at my institution or the right time for the artist, but we remain in touch, we keep talking, and I ask the artist to keep me up to date on new work. So I think there’s a degree of patience involved, which is difficult. It’s difficult on the curatorial side as well. But, there’s also all this good that comes out of that patient process. Even when I can’t show an artist’s work, I can advocate for it in other places and encourage curators to consider artists who I really believe in. And I’m really indebted to the artists I know for keeping my work in mind and sharing names of artists they know who might be a good fit for my projects.

TAB: Even though, not necessarily if I’m an artist in the valley that doesn’t want to be showing here, but if I’m an artist in the valley that wants to be showing in a similar sized gallery in another town, right, there’s a certain amount of leveling up to a certain extent, right?

Stamey: To a certain extent it’s up to the artist, to get yourself out and seen, and that doesn’t necessarily mean galleries, per se. I think artists residency programs are a great way to get feedback and exposure and to connect with other artists. Those relationships connect you with people they know who might offer additional feedback or put your work in a show for which is a good fit. Juried award competitions or juried shows in different places can be a good way to get feedback and exposure too. Be willing to look outside the community you’re in right now and take a chance putting your work forward someplace else.

TAB: How do you see contemporary art evolving in the local level in the valley? What are some local trends that we can stick our hats to and claim as truly valley or Phoenix or Scottsdale things?

Stamey: I don’t know if I’ve been here long enough to claim that I know what’s entirely unique to Scottsdale or the Valley. There’s so much going on that I’m excited about. You and I were talking earlier about the fact that I feel constantly guilty that I’m not getting to every event or show. When there’s so much going on that you miss a lot of it, that’s a good thing. That’s a sign that you have a really vibrant arts community, and that is really exciting.

I’m excited to learn more about the really rich history of arts production and support in the Valley, so much of which is still part of the arts scene today: Ted Decker and phICA and that long history; the ASU Art Museum’s advancement of social practice projects, the build-up of Roosevelt Row. I’m also excited to continually see so many new spaces, events, and organizations take shape: the Grant Street Lecture series; Dana Buhl’s living room gallery, The Table; the shipping containers on Roosevelt; projects that don’t really have spaces, like the Museum of Walking that Angela [Ellsworth] and Steve Yazzie started, which is really so much about being out in other places; nueBOX, which I haven’t had a chance to get to yet, but am excited about their residency model. All of these, I think are incredibly compelling, and I think it’s interesting how people are finding spots where they can both offer something new and expand on things that are already being offered. And I don’t know that I’d say that’s uniquely Phoenix or uniquely Valley, but more that it’s something that happens in other cities of our size, or slightly smaller, that are not New York or LA or Chicago, but that are filled with a really incredible arts community like ours.